


he had become a dragon himself

by aletterinthenameofsanity



Series: long and happy was their reign [8]
Category: Chronicles of Narnia (Movies), Chronicles of Narnia - All Media Types, Chronicles of Narnia - C. S. Lewis
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Ambiguous/Open Ending, Aslan needs to stop leading to the creation of gods, Character Study, Djinni & Genies, Dragons, Eustace Scrubb borders on an eldritch horror monster, Eustace stays in Narnia after the Dawn Treader, Eustace-centric, Gay Male Character, M/M, Male-Female Friendship, Monsters, Oops, Post-Canon, because they will fuck him up someday, how ordinary people become gods, low-key horror, or at least god-like creatures, quietly horrifying
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-11
Updated: 2019-01-11
Packaged: 2019-10-07 14:00:25
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,850
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17367185
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aletterinthenameofsanity/pseuds/aletterinthenameofsanity
Summary: The only person Eustace will ever meet who will have the power to recognize him for what he is will be Lucy. Lucy, named empress of a hundred worlds, named goddess of a thousand more, will be the only one capable of looking beyond this plane and into what other realms have to give.If she looks at Eustace just right, she'll be able to see sharp, dripping fangs and a flaming maw and claws on every limb and shining wings-But she doesn't. Her ability to travel worlds happens months after Eustace has been UnDragoned, and she never looks closely enough, never shifts her gaze in the right way. She won't be paying attention, and his not-quite-natural appearance will skate by, and thus he won't know just how beyond he is.Eustace will think himself human, only feeling the remnants of old magic clinging to his skin, but he will be so much more than that. His body takes a humanoid shape but human is the absolute furthest from the truth that Eustace can get.(Eustace is UnDragoned, but he becomes something far more and far beyond human.)





	he had become a dragon himself

**Author's Note:**

> Title is from C. S. Lewis.
> 
>  
> 
> You thought this series was over with, didn't you?
> 
> But seriously, I hope you all like this. It's a bit different in tone to the rest of series, but it carries a number of the same themes and I really like it.

_Terrible things happen to good people every day._

_Consequentially, I am not one of the good people._

_I am one of the terrible things._

**_-Marianna Paige_ **

 

The war ends.

- 

The war ends, and that's a lie.

Eustace can still trace the scars on his skin, still feel the dragon-fire in his bones. When he fights a battle, the dragon-fire overtakes him. For a moment it feels like his armor is scaled, like he is the dragon again.

And then he returns to the castle after battle, and he is human. But that humanity is a dangerous, fragile one.

Calling Eustace a lion is a dangerous mis-estimate. The same goes for calling him human. 

Being UnDragoned did not make him properly mortal. He can still feel the Deep Magic, the fire too cool and tingling to just be blood, in his veins. The dragon inside of him wants fire, wants war, wants constant action.

He should have known when he rode out to the battlefield that it wouldn't be enough.

-

The war ends, and there's some truth in that.

Eustace lives his days not fighting on the battlefield as an advisor to his cousins, serving in the role he chose.

Eustace is not like his cousins. He was not destined for this.

But he did choose this life. He looked Aslan in the eye and named this place home. He chose to stay, knowing that the people around him knew his faults, had seen his greed take physical form.

He chose a second chance and rejected the way home, to an ordinary life. He chose to stay and try his best to prove himself and make this world better.

-

Eustace carries the dragon-fire in his bones the same way his cousins carry their years in theirs. Most don't see it, he knows, but there is something about being UnDragoned that allows him to sense greater things about him, things that are more magical and less physically obvious.

His cousins look barely adults, and back home he would see that and see only the immaturity in Lucy's shoulders. Here, though, he sees the glow of his cousins' old souls, the strength in their shoulders.

Eustace does not have his own kingdom. He is no king, no queen, no emperor. He is merely a knight sworn to his cousin, his King. All he has is his own strength and the strange vision his time as a Dragon had given him.

But that makes him aware of just how fragile and human his cousins are. Despite their warrior titles, despite their status as the Golden Kings and Queens, their bones are breakable and their skin is fragile. Edmund is High King, yes, but Peter is merely an advisor and both are very capable of taking massive damage in battle. Eustace has heard stories about old wars and near-deaths, of how Edmund nearly died if if hadn't been for Lucy's cordial.

Eustace remembers the way his claws had encircled Edmund's torso, about how easily Edmund would have snapped in half under his hold. It's a memory that's hard to forget, even as he watches Edmund take the command in battle and destory opponents in the diplomatic arena and attend giant festivals in the city where people speak of him as the Once and Future King.

Eustace swears himself to his cousins, to protecting them and making sure they are kept safe. Whether Peter or Edmund or Anna-Mae or Caspian, some warriors and some not, all he wants is to keep them protected with the strength he finds himself yet.

He is making something good of himself, and he couldn't be happier.

-

The war ends, and Eustace finds himself serving more in a diplomatic position in his role as both the Kings' knight and their cousin.

Eustace meets Jai on a routine trip to Calormen. Jai is a djinn from the deserts of Calormen. His skin is dark, his hair long, and his eyes brighter than the candle that summons him.

In England, Eustace wasn't old enough to dream of love. His world in England was facts and figures, books about politics and economics and never a single fairy tale until he fell through a painting and into an ocean.

But here, with Jai...things are different.

Eustace knows it can't last. Jai's immortal, and Eustace's not quite mortal, he knows that to be true, but he's certainly not going to live forever. He will age and die, and Jai will live on.

But Eustace can't quite bring himself to care. Not when Eustace kisses Jai and his lips taste like apple butter and his voice is like the song of a siren, not when he looks at Eustace, eyes flickering, and says, “I can see the dragon under your skin, Sir Knight, and it is beautiful.”

It's been ten years since Eustace entered Narnia, but he knows things. He knows that his body will never feel natural again, not with the dragon fire rushing beneath his skin, but when Jai's cool fingers touch his flesh he feels a bit more...normal than he has since he fell through that painting. Not more human, not quite, but at least a little better in his own skin.

And this is it. This is the boy Eustace will die with, Jai and his graceful fingers and freedom-fire eyes and the apple-butter-taste of his lips.

(Eustace always wondered how a boy who lives in Narnia tastes like apple butter when such a thing doesn't exist here, but now it doesn't matter.)

When he and Jai get married, Jai in traditional Calormen robes and Eustace in a Narnian tunic and trousers, Eustace can literally feel the magic sparking between their fingers. Jai is smiling at him, the fire in his gaze cool and his smile soft, and Eustace knows that he will love this man more than he could any other.

-

Something it will take Eustace a lifetime to learn:

The fire in his veins, the magic in his skin- it is something Aslan tapped into using the conduits of Deep Magic, but the end result in the reversion back is nothing he ever could have predicted. 

People who meet all of them will think Edmund Aslan's greatest legacy, but he is only the tip of the pile. There are Susan and Peter, who made stories of themselves, Caspian, who turned his back on his culture and saved Narnia, and Anna-Mae, who left her own world to make Narnia better. All of them are magnificent in their own way.  
  
But then there are Eustace and Lucy, a monster and a goddess.

Aslan will never recognize what he has created, in Eustace and Lucy, what great horrors his actions have brought into being.

The only person Eustace will ever meet who will have the power to recognize him for what he is will be Lucy. Lucy, named empress of a hundred worlds, named goddess of a thousand more, will be the only one capable of looking beyond this plane and into what other realms have to give.

If she looks at Eustace just right, she'll be able to see sharp, dripping fangs and a flaming maw and claws on every limb and shining wings-

But she doesn't. Her ability to travel worlds happens months after Eustace has been UnDragoned, and she never looks closely enough, never shifts her gaze in the right way. She won't be paying attention, and his not-quite-natural appearance will skate by, and thus he won't know just how beyond he is.

Eustace will think himself human, only feeling the remnants of old magic clinging to his skin, but he will be so much more than that. His body takes a humanoid shape but _human_ is the absolute furthest from the truth that Eustace can get.

Some might have called the result _monster_. But in England, he never learned the language necessary to describe such a creature, much less expected to apply it to himself.

He has his suspicions, of course, but he has no way to see the truth of his existence.

- 

So this is how Eustace will learn what he truly is:

Eustace will be too old for his own skin. He will know himself to be something different, something _beyond_ , when he still carries the same youth as Edmund and Caspian and Anna-Mae and Peter's grandchildren.

Caspian and Peter are dead and gone. Edmund is on his last breaths, ruling from his deathbed until his daughter Averie's full coronation.

The Lady of the Green Kirtle will steal away Eustace's great-nephew and great-niece, Rillian and Susan, and he will have none of it.

Eustace will look at the Lady and look at Jai, seventy years into marriage but still carrying the face of a twenty-year-old, and his skin will burst. Out will come the dragon, but it will not be the dragon of before; no, it will be one whose very scales are aflame, one who breaks the laws of physics with its scream.

And Eustace will know himself to be far more than the Lady of the Green Kirtle, than Jai, than even Aslan, god of Narnia.

Lucy will smile at Eustace after he devours the witch. "I can see it, now," she will say, and Eustace will see the glow of magic in her skin, the whole of universes in her eyes.

"How didn't you before?"

"I was paying attention to other things," she will admit.

-

When Eustace turns to the Lady's armies, he will want to devour. He  _will_ devour. 

Eustace returns to his husband that night, blood on his mouth and flames in his hair. "I'm not human anymore," he says.

Jai smiles at him, pulling him down to their bed and kissing him. "I've never been scared of you, my dragon." 

Eustace can feel Jai's magic sparking against his skin, being consumed by the dragon-fire within him, and he knows that any other person the not-dragon inside of him would have devoured completely tonight. Only Jai, a djinn from the wastes of the Calormen desert, a near-god on his own, could withstand the pull of the creature, the void, inside of Eustace.

-

The war ends, but it never does, because there is a dragon in Eustace's spine and a fire in his veins and the all-consuming hunger in his throat.

Edmund will die, Eustace's hand in his right and his daughter's in his left, but that will not be the end.

There will be legends about the Once and Future King's avenging spirit coming back to devour his children's enemies.

In the battles after this, there is no knight. There is no UnDragoned riding into battle to defend his cousin and lord.

Enemy armies call the oncoming creature a demon, a monster, a wonderterror.

Narnia's armies call it  _salvation_ , a prayer and a cheer on their lips.

Eustace will keep his vow to his king, until the end of Narnia, and that will be the only thing save Lucy's occasional visit that will remind him to be human. After all, Jai doesn't need his human form and the wars don't  _want_ Eustace the UnDragoned- they want the god his Beyond-form has become.

- 

They will still call Sir Eustace " _UnDragoned"_ and it will be a lie, but it will also be a truth, because Eustace is not properly a dragon. He is something more, something  _terrifying_. 

The generations go by and by, and Eustace lasts. He lives lifetime after lifetime, becoming something far more than human. The closest words he can find, after years of searching, are something between  _monster_ and  _god._

Lucy drops by less and less, leaving the protection of the Narnia to Eustace and Jai. Eustace doesn't begrudge Lucy her travels and her constant quests, nor the flings and love affairs she engages in on such adventures. Though he has just one husband that he loves with all his heart, not everyone is like him. An eternal life might seem drudgery with only one world to spend it in.

Aslan never drops by, never makes his presence known again, and Eustace must wonder if maybe his presence is what's keeping Aslan away. Could the god of Narnia be terrified of the monster that Narnia has now come to keep?

- 

Lucy stops by, once, to say that her sister has arrived in Aslan's Final World, and that the only Pevensies left alive are her and Eustace.

"How much longer will we live?" he asks.

He looks Lucy in the eye and sees black holes, sees gaping chasms where gods go to die. "We're gods," she says, voice firm with the strength of a thousand souls, "We will outlast Time itself." 

Eustace thinks of Jai, about how his husband had already lived a thousand years in the Calormen desert before they met, and he wonders how far, how deep, the universe has dug itself into his bones. How much of the dragon fire in his veins is magic of Narnia, and how much of it is from a place Beyond, the same place that Lucy gets her ability to travel worlds from? Will he really live forever?

-

The war ends, because the world ends, and there is nothing left to devour.

Narnia will fall and Eustace, Jai, and Lucy will stand, overlooking the darkness. They are the only three left in the land that was once Aslan's proudest creation, once the kingdom that Lucy ruled and loved.

"I can't feel proud, because beauty like this world should never die," Lucy says, "But Aslan's reign in this world is done. All he has left is his final world, which will be a new start for so many."

Eustace and Jai move into one of Lucy's worlds, one where superheroes patrol the skies and two low-level magic users will barely be noticed. Eustace is more human here than he was in Narnia, but he'll never be truly human again. Not when there is the deepest of magics sitting in his spine, a constant heat under his skin.

"You're human _enough_ ," Jai says, eyes glittering, and Eustace kisses him.

-

The war ends, and Eustace is not human anymore. He is not a dragon. He has fangs instead of teeth, fire in his blood, and when people look at him, for just a moment, they see a monster under his skin.

Eustace doesn't know how much of his life, how much of his soul, is still Eustace Clarence Scrubb, but he is content in the creature he has come to be, in the purpose he has found as an occasional consultant to the superheroes that live and work in his city.

Here, in Lucy's world, the urge to devour has diminished slightly. He is able to help without going overboard, to occasionally go into battle against supervillains without destroying entire armies in his heroism.

(And if their neighborhood, on the border of the desert and suburbia, suddenly sees a decrease in the number of wild cats and feral animals roaming the streets, then that's something that no one will ever really attribute to quiet Eustace Scrubb and his kind husband. After all, there's nothing the quiet librarian and the yoga instructor could ever have to do with the missing animals, right?)

-

"Do you like it here?" Lucy asks when she visits them, a few years after they've settled in, and though it's been a thousand years since Edmund and the rest of the Pevensies passed, Lucy still looks like the same twenty-year-old woman she's always looked like.

"Yeah," Eustace says, and turns to his husband, who is watching  _Power Rangers,_ their favorite show to watch together. Sure, it's for children, but watching the colors and animation and everything is fascinating for two men who have spent their whole lives in worlds lacking such technology. "You, Jai?"

Jai smiles at Lucy. "Couldn't like it better."

Lucy smiles at them. "Glad to hear that my favorite cousins like my world."

"We're your  _only_ cousins, Luce," Jai says, and Lucy shrugs.

"Same difference, as the children say nowadays."

They haven't been children in eons, in millennia, since the days when their worlds were young and they had yet to become gods and monsters. Eustace can barely remember such a long time ago, back to a time when he was human and had no hunger gnawing at his gut.

And yet, there are some normal things that Eustace still experiences, all of these thousand of years later. He still wakes up every morning next to his husband, still enjoys the taste of curry and tea, still loves to tease his cousin for her adventures and her flings. Life is as normal as it could be for a monster like him, and he loves where he is.

The kettle whistles and Eustace gives Jai a quick kiss on the cheek before standing up and heading to the oven. He pours three mugs, handing them out to each of his family members before picking up his own.

"Cheers," Eustace says, offering up his mug, and they both smile at him.

"Cheers," Lucy says as Jai says, " _Ciyars!"_ and they clink mugs.


End file.
